Disrupting the $8 Trillion Logistics Industry

Turvo announced the launch of its revolutionary "collaborative logistics" platform that empowers shippers, brokers and carriers to work together in real-time across the entire supply chain, the first real-time collaborative logistics platform that connects anyone, anywhere to move things. By 24/7 Staff

March 30, 2017

Turvo has announced the launch of its revolutionary "collaborative logistics" platform that empowers shippers, brokers and carriers to work together in real-time across the entire supply chain.

The company also announced it has raised $25 million in Series A financing from top-tier investors.

Logistics is an $8 trillion-dollar global industry(1) plagued by complexity and chaos – and it has been for centuries.

Currently, companies manage shipments using pen and paper, spreadsheets, and outdated software with countless redundant, manual tasks.

Communication is done through back and forth phone calls, emails, and faxes which is inefficient and error-prone.

"Turvo brings order to the chaos by connecting shippers, brokers and carriers to collaborate in real time, helping them take the time and cost out of shipping," said Turvo CEO, Eric Gilmore, who co-founded the company.

Eric continued, "Logistics impacts every aspect of our lives and yet companies that need to move things from A to B still use archaic technology and operate in silos."

Turvo's uniqueness lies in its groundbreaking connected cloud platform that provides real-time visibility of shipments, AI-powered productivity tools, and secure collaboration that breaks down traditional organizational silos.

While other solutions focus on more narrow aspects of logistics, such as on-demand trucking, freight forwarding, or track-and-trace of goods, Turvo spans the entire supply chain from orders and shipments to invoices and payments.

Based in Silicon Valley and with offices in Hyderabad, India, Turvo's founding team and investors have an unrivaled track record of building revolutionary products and companies. 

The founding team includes:

• Eric Gilmore, co-founder and CEO. Previously, Eric was Vice President of Retail Products at Quotient Technology where he created the Retailer iQ platform, was Director of Communications for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and then became a product executive in Bing's search business.
• Sai Nagboth, co-founder and CTO. Previously, Sai was Director of Retail Products at Quotient Technology for the Retailer iQ platform and was an engineering leader and principal architect at Accenture.
• Jeff Dangelo, co-founder and COO. Previously, Jeff was Vice President of Sales at MegaCorp Logistics and, prior to that, a member of the sales leadership team at Total Quality Logistics (TQL).

Turvo's Series A funding was led by Activant Capital with participation from existing investors Felicis Ventures, Upside Partnership, Slow Ventures and Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod, iPhone, and Nest.

Other investors include: Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box; Kevin Nazemi, co-founder of Renew.com and co-founder of Oscar Insurance; and Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Bank of Baroda and former Chairman of Microsoft India.

Founders of Turvo: Eric Gilmore, Sai Nagboth & Jeff Dangelo

"Turvo is one of those rare companies with an opportunity to revolutionize a global industry," said Steve Sarracino, founder and Managing Director of Activant Capital. "Turvo has the total package of an incredible team, product and business model."

"Turvo is revolutionizing logistics with an end-to-end IOT platform to create the 'Internet of Shipping,'" said Fadell, who was founder and CEO of Nest, the company that is widely credited for bringing the Internet of Things to the home and making it mainstream.

"Turvo goes beyond supplying a logistics platform. It also makes available a constantly learning and improving intelligent shipping assistant to help any shipper of any size meet or beat the best in the industry."

Turvo is working with a number of iconic companies like Oberto Brands, the nation's leading all-natural jerky manufacturer; Le Metier De Beaute, a high-end cosmetics company; and Anchor Brewing, America's original craft brewery – as well as logistics providers like Service First Logistics (SFL).

"Turvo is game-changing. It solves some of the biggest and most complex problems in the industry with an elegant and empowering experience," said Richard Blanch, founder and CEO of Le Metier De Beaute.

Turvo's software platform is smart, collaborative and easy to use. The platform works across the entire supply chain and includes the following features:

• Cross-Company Collaboration: Turvo keeps everyone on the same page by making it easy to share shipments and documents, send messages, and assign tasks to people both inside and outside the organization, reducing back-and-forth phone calls and emails.
• Real-Time Visibility: Turvo tracks shipments in real-time from dispatch to delivery using the Turvo mobile app and hardware sensors, giving companies unprecedented transparency into their supply chain.
• AI-Powered Productivity: Intelligent notifications, instant search, contextual actions and automated recommendations empower smarter, faster decisions.
• Billing and Payments: With a single collaborative platform, digital invoices can be shared instantly and payments can be scheduled automatically, eliminating emails and faxes so everyone gets paid faster.
• Security and Privacy: Turvo is secure by design and built on an enterprise-grade cloud platform. Granular privacy controls ensure users always control who can see what.

One reason why retailers are struggling: Americans are tapped out

By Jonathon M. Trugman

March 26, 2017 | 2:07am | Updated

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If you are wondering why US retailers are feeling a strain, look no further than the latest report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that stated 33 percent of Americans said they could not come up with $2,000 over the next 30 days if the need arose.

Many Americans do not have the means for emergencies or for a family member’s needs — like a quarter of a ObamaCare deductible, or even enough for 25 percent down payment on the average cost of a funeral — according to the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Access Survey.

No matter how you look at it, average Americans are tapped out.

There is one glimmer of hope in terms of the financial fragility: The study shows that since the election, there has been a modest uptick in the percentage of households that feel they could come up with the cash.

In October, 65.9 percent of households said they could get the cash. Today, it’s 67.2 percent. The report’s data also point to more Americans giving up on applying for credit — not even for credit cards or a mortgage, or even a personal line of credit often used for starting small businesses.

The percentage of people in the study who indicated that they would likely apply for a minimum of one type of credit over the next 12 months fell from 27.8 percent in October to 26 percent, the lowest level on record in the study.

Think about that: 75 percent of Americans don’t think they will even bother applying. And the fall is even worse for those with credit scores under 680.

Let’s face it, it’s always hard to chase dreams like starting a business or buying a home. In today’s economy, it’s so damn near impossible that people have given up.

President Trump’s optimism has helped turn the tide of business leaders and the financial markets, but the kitchen table economics will not change for many Americans until credit becomes less hamstrung by regulation.

Starbucks on why ‘conversational commerce’ is the future

The coffee giant believes voice ordering will become the next big thing in retail.

By Leonie Roderick 23 Mar 2017 10:59 am

Starbucks says its heavy focus on technology is enabling it to embrace conversational commerce “very rapidly”, allowing consumers to order coffee at home or in their car using smart devices such as Amazon Echo.

Speaking at its annual meeting of Shareholders yesterday (22 March), the company’s chief technology officer Gerri Martin-Flickinger spoke about how the ways in which consumers are interacting with technology is radically changing. While young people currently “use one finger and point and click” to order, she predicts the next generation “won’t even do that” – and will use their voices instead.

Late last year, the coffee company announced it would be implementing voice ordering into its mobile app. So far, it has made the feature available to roughly 100,000 customers in the US, and it plans to roll it out nationwide by the end of the year. It is unknown when the feature will be made available to UK consumers.

Our technology foundation is allowing us to embrace conversational commerce very, very rapidly.

Gerri Martin-Flickinger, Starbucks

“As you can imagine, the opportunity for voice and other settings becomes quite intriguing. For example, we delivered and elect the skill that allows you to order coffee at home from your Amazon Echo. Our technology foundation is allowing us to embrace conversational commerce very, very rapidly,” she explained.

“It will be available in market later this year for customers with the Alexa Skills, and Ford with Sync 3. So, it only takes a little imagination to think about where conversational ordering will show up next.”

Digital gifting

The brand is also hoping to revive and update its Starbucks gift card system, which were traditionally available in-store and through other retailers. It also allows people to purchase the gift cards both online and through the app.

Consumers are now also able to send gift cards through social channels, with the brand planning to release Starbucks gifting through iMessage next month. This will allow customers to give a Starbucks gift card within an iMessage conversation on an iPhone or an iPad. The recipient can redeem the gift card right from their iPhone using Apple Pay.

Martin-Flickinger concluded: “We’ve many more social gifting solutions coming all with the intent of making gift giving and receiving even easier for our customers. The trends I’ve been talking about here today are not just US-centric. We’re driving towards these types of solutions all around the world.”

US jobs are being threatened by automation

• BI Intelligence
 

• 6h

BI Intelligence

Thirty-eight percent of all jobs based in the US could be automated in the next 15 years, according to a recent study from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — the highest percentage of all the countries analyzed in the study.

Notably, the study found that it's not just lower-wage blue-collar positions that are at risk of being automated, but also a number of white-collar jobs, particularly in the transportation, retail, and financial services sectors.

Companies could be particularly interested in automating their US-based workforce as a result of high labor costs and numerous routine-centric jobs in the country. PwC points out that US jobs largely consist of white-collar workers who carry out routine tasks — such as back-office support roles — that robots or other technologies could be capable of executing soon. This, combined with the country’s high wages and standard of living relative to the rest of the world, make it an area that has a substantial number of jobs at risk".

Many other developed economies with large service sectors also have substantial jobs at risk:

• Thirty percent of UK-based jobs are at risk of being automated. The UK also has a substantial financial services sector, though PwC observes that these jobs involve fewer routine tasks than those in the US.
• In Germany, 35% of the labor market is threatened by automation. The report notes that Germany has a larger manufacturing sector than the UK, a sector that traditionally has been a prime target for automating tasks on assembly lines.
• Twenty-one percent of jobs in Japan are at risk of being replaced in the next 15 years. However, PwC notes that a large percentage of Japanese-based jobs already are automated. As a result, there's much less room for growth in automation in the coming years.

While robots are already common in many industrial settings, they'll soon make their way into white-collar professions as well. The manufacturing sector has benefited from a very high ROI on industrial IoT solutions, making it the sector with the highest number of jobs lost to automation. But in the coming years, increasing numbers of white-collar jobs will also be at risk, according to PwC. This will pose problems for the larger economy that might be solved through workforce retraining programs, for example.

Businesses throughout the world are increasingly using robots to automate portions of their workflow.

Traditionally, robots have been used primarily in manufacturing. But other industries including healthcare, shipping and logistics, food services, retail, hospitality, and more are starting to also use robots. For example, hospitals are using robots to assist in surgery, retail stores are testing robots to take inventory, and warehouses are using robots help sort packages.

The High-Speed Trading Behind Your Amazon Purchase

By Christopher Mims 

I wanted to buy some mini marshmallows recently, so I went on Amazon. Perhaps because of their resemblance to packing material -- light, bulky, ubiquitous -- I figured they'd be cheap. But when I found the most popular brand, not only did the marshmallows cost twice what I'd pay at my local store, but the price had skyrocketed overnight.

Just beneath the placid surface of a typical product page on Amazon lies an unseen world, a system where third-party vendors can sell products alongside Amazon's own goods. It's like a stock market, complete with day traders, code-slinging quants, artificial intelligence algorithms and, yes, flash crashes.

Amazon gave people and companies the ability to sell on Amazon.com in 2000, and it has since grown into a juggernaut, representing 49% of the goods Amazon ships. Amazon doesn't break out numbers for the portion of its business driven by independent sellers, but that translates to tens of billions in revenue a year. Out of more than 2 million registered sellers, 100,000 each sold more than $100,000 in goods in the past year, Peter Faricy, Amazon's vice president in charge of the division that includes outside sellers, said at a conference last week.

It's clear, after talking to sellers and the software companies that empower them, that the biggest of these vendors are growing into sophisticated retailers in their own right. The top few hundred use pricing algorithms to battle with one another for the coveted "Buy Box," which designates the default seller of an item. It's the Amazon equivalent of a No. 1 ranking on Google search, and a tremendous driver of sales.

To see what all this means for the consumer, download the Chrome extension Keepa, which will show you the price history for any given item on Amazon. For the marshmallow listing I had been eyeing, the wild pricing gyrations resembled a penny stock during heavy trading.

Amazon's retail business "is like this massive slowed-down stock exchange," says Juozas Kaziuk nas, founder and chief executive of Marketplace Pulse, a business-intelligence firm focused on e-commerce. The usual market dynamics are at work: Sellers entering and leaving the market, temporary scarcity when someone runs out of stock or a manufacturer falls behind, and sellers testing consumers and each other with high and low prices.

The vendor of the marshmallows I wanted told me his high price was an attempt to bait competitors into raising their own asking prices for the item. This works because sellers of commodity items on Amazon are constantly monitoring and updating their prices, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times a day across thousands of items, says Mr. Kaziuk nas. Most use "rules-based" pricing systems, which simply seek to match competitors' prices or beat them by some small fraction. If those systems get into bidding wars, items offered by only a few sellers can suffer sudden price collapses -- "flash crashes."

More sophisticated systems for pricing are offered by companies like New York City-based Feedvisor, which claims to use artificial intelligence to learn the market dynamics behind every item in a catalog. This system is "set it and forget it," says Barry Lampert, one of Feedvisor's customers and a top-500 seller on Amazon. The algorithm will often raise the price on items in a seller's catalog, to see if other sellers will follow suit. The goal is to maximize sales while avoiding bidding wars that can be a race to the bottom.

The result, said my marshmallow merchant, is that the customer isn't always getting the absolute best price, especially compared with in-store retail. But the point of Amazon, he adds, isn't to offer a consumer the absolute lowest price possible; it's to offer the lowest price possible given the convenience that Amazon offers. "Free shipping, " after all, isn't free for the seller.

As more sellers compete on Amazon, it's possible price volatility will increase. At the same time, the percentage change in any given price is likely to shrink, says Victor Rosenman, chief executive and founder of Feedvisor. Just as in any other market, the more sellers there are for an item, the less power any one has to affect its price.

The rapid growth of Amazon's third-party seller program and the cutthroat competition Amazon encourages mean the mix of sellers on Amazon has changed tremendously since its inception, and will continue to change, says Mr. Kaziuk nas. Initially, it was mostly sellers engaged in retail arbitrage -- buying things from actual stores or wholesalers, then selling them for a higher price on Amazon. Later, better-organized resellers who bought directly from manufacturers piled on. Now, many resellers are feeling squeezed out both by manufacturers, who are more than ever selling through Amazon directly, and by bigger, tech-savvier fellow merchants.

The most vigorous competitor to sellers on Amazon is, in many cases, Amazon itself. The merchants I interviewed say it is common for Amazon to notice a product category that does well and begin selling it as well. Amazon may even go further and develop a house-branded version of a product. While the price of a pack of Duracell AAA batteries, for instance, fluctuates from one day to the next, the price of Amazon's own brand of AAAs is stable -- and, as of this writing, costs almost half as much per battery.

Mr. Lampert says he worries every day about Amazon moving into his most lucrative product categories, which often happens. That's one reason he maintains shops on other platforms, including those operated by Amazon competitors eBay and Wal-Mart's Jet.com.

In the end, Amazon seems to be fulfilling its promise of using its platform to lower prices while expanding the variety of items available to the customer. The question for its partners, however, should be whether or not their own businesses may eventually be disrupted in the name of customer service.

Sears Today, Walmart Tomorrow? Why You Don't Want To Own Any Retail Stocks

 

Adam Hartung ,  

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Traditional retailers just keep providing more bad news. Payless Shoes said it plans to file bankruptcy next week, closing 500 of its 4,000 stores. Most likely it will follow the path of Radio Shack, which hasn't made a profit since 2011. Radio Shack filed bankruptcy and shut a gob of stores as part of its "turnaround plan." Then in February Radio Shack filed its second bankruptcy — most likely killing the chain entirely this time.

Sears Holdings finally admitted it probably can't survive as a going concern this week. Sears has lost over $10 billion since 2010 — when it last showed a profit — and owes over $4 billion to its creditors. Retail stocks cratered Monday as the list of retailers closing stores accelerated: Sears, KMart, Macy's, Radio Shack, JCPenney, American Apparel, Abercrombie & Fitch, The Limited, CVS, GNC, Office Depot, HHGregg, The Children's Place and Crocs are just some of the household names that are slowly (or not so slowly) dying.

None of this should be surprising. By the time CEO Ed Lampert merged KMart with Sears the trend to e-commerce was already pronounced. Anyone could build an excel spreadsheet that would demonstrate as on-line retail grew, brick-and-mortar retail would decline.  In the low margin world of retail, profits would evaporate. It would be a blood bath. Any retailer with any weakness simply would not survive this market shift — and that clearly included outdated store concepts like Sears, KMart and Radio Shack which long ago were outflanked by on-line shopping and trendier storefronts.d

Yet, not everyone is ready to give up on some retailers. Walmart, for example, still trades at $70/share, which is higher than it traded in 2015 and about where it traded back in 2012. Some investors still think that there are brick-and-mortar outfits that are either immune to the trends, or will survive the shake-out and have higher profits in the future.

And that is why we have to be very careful about business myths.

There are a lot of people that believe as markets shrink the ultimate consolidation will leave one, or a few, competitors who will be very profitable. Capacity will go away, and profits will return. In the end, they believe if you are the last buggy whip maker you will be profitable — so investors just need to pick who will be the survivor and wait it out. And, if you believe this, then you have justified owning Walmart.

 

Only, markets don't work that way. As industries consolidate they end up with competitors who either lose money or just barely eke out a small profit. Think about the auto industry, airlines or land-line telecom companies.

Two factors exist which effectively forces all the profits out of these businesses and therefore make it impossible for investors to make money long-term.

First,competitive capacity always remains just a bit too much for the market need.  Management, and often investors, simply don't want to give up in the face of industry consolidation. They keep hoping to reach a rainbow that will save them. So capacity lingers and lingers — always pushing prices down even as costs increase. Even after someone fails, and that capacity theoretically goes away, someone jumps in with great hopes for the future and boosts capacity again. Therefore, excess capacity overhangs the marketplace forcing prices down to break-even, or below, and never really goes away.

Given the amount of retail real estate out there and the bargains being offered to anyone who wants to open, or expand, stores this problem will persist for decades in retail.

Second, demand in most markets keeps declining. Hopefuls project that demand will "stabilize," thus balancing the capacity and allowing for price increases. Because demand changes aren't linear, there are often plateaus that make it appear as if demand won't go down more. But then something changes — an innovation, regulatory change, taste change — and demand takes another hit. And all the hope goes away as profits drop, again.

It is not a successful strategy to try being the "last man standing" in any declining market. No competitor is immune to these forces when markets shift. No matter how big, when trends shift and new forms of competition start growing every old-line company will be negatively affected. Whether fast, or slow, the value of these companies will continue declining until they eventually become worthless.

Nor is it successful long-term to try and segment the business into small groupings which management thinks can be protected. When Xerox brought to market photocopying, small offset press manufacturers (ABDick and Multigraphics ) said not to worry. Xeroxing might be OK in some office installations, but there were customer segments that would forever use lithography. Even as demand shrunk, well into the 1990s, they said that big corporations, industrial users, government entities, schools and other segments would forever need the benefits of lithography, so investors were safe. Today the small offset press market is a tiny fraction of its size in the 1960s. ABDick and Multigraphics both went through rounds of bankruptcies before disappearing. Xerography, its child desktop publishing, and its grandchild electronic screens, killed offset for almost all applications.

So don't be lured into false hopes by retailers who claim their segment is "protected." Short-term things might not look bad. But the market has already shifted to e-commerce and this is just round one of change. More and more innovations are coming that will make the need for traditional stores increasingly unnecessary.

Many readers have expressed their disappointment in my chronic warnings about Walmart. But those warnings are no different than my warnings about Sears Holdings. It's just that the timing may be different. Both companies have been over-investing in assets (brick-and-mortar stores) that are declining in value as they have attempted to defend and extend their old business model. Both radically under-invested in new markets which were cannibalizing their old business. And, in the end, both will end up with the same results.

And this is true for all retailers that depend on traditional brick-and-mortar sales for their revenues and profits — it's only a matter of when things will go badly, not if. So traditional retail is nowhere that any investor wants to be.

 COMPANIES MUST UNDERSTAND, THE CUSTOMER IS THE CHANNEL

Posted at 16:54h in Customer Experience (CX), Supplier Communication by Grant LeBoff 

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We are living through a revolution. The technological and digital age is creating changes in society not seen since the Industrial Revolution. It is affecting all aspects of our lives from work to shopping, politics to education and far more besides.

In terms of communications, this revolution is simple to understand. For the first time in history everyone owns a channel. There was a time when virtually all the information that we consumed came from media companies. Whether it was news, music, T.V, literature, films or even business to business trade information, distribution of the books, CDs, programmes, newspapers and magazines was in the hands of relatively few media companies.

Today, this is simply not the case. Of course, media organisations are still putting out their content. However, now all companies have their own media channels. From websites to social platforms and blogs to YouTube, businesses possess their own media channels which they can use to distribute information direct to their customers.

Most importantly, perhaps, every individual now has their own media channels. For example, Facebook is close to having two billion users, and that is merely one of the options available. While these media channels may not be ‘broadcasting’ in the traditional sense, they could be thought of as ‘narrowcasting’. In other words, individuals have a way of sharing their thoughts, en masse, with family, friends and colleagues amongst whom they do have an influence.

In fact, whereas traditionally the main way information was distributed was via broadcasting and publishing, presently the primary source of distribution is ‘social sharing’. Social proof (what other people say and do) has always been the biggest influencer on human behaviour. That is why word of mouth has always been important to the success of any good business. However, today, because everyone now owns media, and continually ‘narrowcasts’ to an engaged audience, word of mouth and social proof are more important than ever before.

The result is simple; customers are no longer just purchasers of products and services. They are so much more. Now, they are a channel. In fact, they are likely to be the most important channel to market a company has.

The ramifications of this for business are huge. We have entered the ‘experience’ economy. In an age where products and services are ubiquitous, companies are no longer competing merely on ‘what’ they supply. Rather, they are competing on the whole experience they offer. This includes considering how they involve their customer and how they make their customer feel.

Whether it is encouraging and utilising customer feedback, data or other information, to create new product offerings, improve existing lines or feed into general innovation, the more customers can become ‘involved’, the more of an experience is provided. Listening to customers is important, but it is not enough. Engaging customers and allowing them to participate, almost as partners in the brand, is how companies can start to deliver a real and meaningful experience.

To create an amazing experience, companies must also consider how they want their customers to feel emotionally. In other words, do you sell candles or romance? What is the emotional deliverable of your offering?

Delivering experiences matters for two main reasons. Firstly, it is unlikely that a company will be able to compete solely on a product offering. The plethora of choice available, in the market, makes differentiation incredibly challenging. However, experiences are more three dimensional. Once differentiation is about the whole user journey from how customers are involved and how they feel through to products which also deliver on that emotional promise, companies have far more opportunity to become distinctive, even in the most competitive of markets.

Secondly, today the customer is the channel. Social sharing on digital platforms is becoming the major way we learn, discover and explore. People generally don’t share product information. Rather, they share moments, stories, thoughts and feelings. In other words, experiences. By creating and delivering a great experience, companies and brands can become part of the conversation and, therefore, truly benefit from the most important channel to market that exists today.

Walmart Won’t Stay on Top If Its Strategy Is “Copy Amazon”

• Denise Lee Yohn

MARCH 21, 2017 

 

Walmart Won’t Stay on Top If Its Strategy Is “Copy Amazon”

 

Walmart’s recent change to free two-day shipping for online orders, no membership required, is the latest in a series of moves the company has made to fight Amazon and grow its e-commerce business. Last year, it purchased Jet.com and installed Jet’s founder, Marc Lore, as head of its e-commerce division. It has also been acquiring e-commerce niche players, including Shoebuy and outdoor gear retailer Moosejaw, and digital technology companies, such as search experts Adchemy and cloud platform OneOps.

Walmart does need to shore up its e-commerce capabilities, but its attempts to out-Amazon Amazon aren’t a winning strategy. For one thing, by offering the new shipping service, Walmart is really only playing catch-up. Lore himself described free shipping as table stakes.

And the new shipping offer doesn’t even put Walmart on par with Amazon, since it only applies to orders of $35 or more. That may seem like a low hurdle, especially when Amazon’s Prime membership costs $99 per year. But Prime members are likely to forget about the cost after it’s been paid for the year, while Walmart’s policy means money is inserted into the purchase equation with every transaction. Anything that makes people think about the amount they’re spending during their purchase reinforces Amazon’s advantage in delivering no-brainer experiences. Moreover, free two-day shipping already feels like old news. Consider that Amazon also offers free same-day delivery by 9 PM on more than 1 million items in select areas and free two-hour delivery on some products in select metro areas through its Prime Now option.

Importantly, a Prime membership doesn’t only include shipping benefits; members also receive access to movie streaming, photo storage, music streaming, and early access to time-sensitive “Lightning Deals.” In Amazon’s growing brick-and-mortar bookstores, Prime members can buy books for discounted prices, while others have to pay the cover price. Amazon will likely continue adding Prime benefits to the mix, potentially including the holy grail of entertainment: live sports.

For all these reasons, Prime has been described by CEO Jeff Bezos as one of the company’s three strategic pillars. The goal is to make potential customers believe that “if you are not a Prime member, you are being irresponsible.”

Walmart can’t compete with this value proposition, at least not yet. Walmart also can’t challenge Amazon’s existing brand equity in access and selection. With approximately 160 million items for sale, Amazon has become the go-to outlet for anything. In comparison, Walmart.com sells “only” 15 million items — and just 2 million of them are available for the free two-day shipping. It’s no wonder 52% of online shoppers start their search on Amazon, according IHL Group.

Amazon also has the advantage of years of consumer data, as well as the data analytics proficiency to spot trending products, make smarter pricing and assortment decisions, and deliver personalized customer experiences. Walmart’s acquisitions of e-commerce companies and digital technologies, and the talent that comes along with them, enable it to get better at this, but Amazon will continue to improve too.

Trying to beat Amazon at its own game is not only likely to fail, it’s also not in Walmart’s best interests. Walmart has perhaps the best physical distribution and retail network in the world. It needs to be competitive on digital channels, sure. But, more important, it should excel at brick-and-mortar. Improving the in-store experience, promoting omnichannel shopping and fulfillment options, and developing in-person service innovations are avenues that leverage its brand equity and core competencies — and they’re approaches that would put Amazon at a disadvantage. Instead of cutting human resource jobs (which seems counterproductive for a company that employs 2.3 million people) and closing new store formats (which make the brand more convenient and accessible to more people), Walmart should invest to advance its strongest competitive advantage: its physical stores.

The company’s obsession with competing with Amazon also seems to have taken Walmart’s focus off its brand identity in everyday low prices. In its announcements and ads about the new free shipping service, product prices have not been mentioned. Walmart has held a low-price leadership position from its start. Now, in some cases, it can often lower prices than Amazon because Jet.com’s operating model doesn’t rely on holding inventory. But the company has elected to make neither its new pricing capabilities nor its long-standing low prices part of its marketing efforts for e-commerce. Moreover, the company’s new television campaign, which employs a whimsical style more suited to tech startups and was launched during programming more suited to higher-end brands (the Oscars), reinforces the company’s departure from its focus on low prices.

Many companies feel a pull to imitate the practices of successful rivals. But this rarely ends well. Core competencies stagnate, customers become confused, and the opportunity to lead instead of follow is squandered. Instead of gaining on Amazon, Walmart seems poised to lose valuable ground.

A New Mission for a Female Supply Chain Pioneer

By Lora CecereMarch 22, 2017UncategorizedNo Comments

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This week I have been working with the Supply Chain Insights team to analyze and write our annual supply chain talent report. With over 400 respondents in the study, cross-tabbing and data analysis was fun. We had many options.

High-Level Findings

In general there is high job satisfaction in supply chain careers: 70% are either very satisfied or satisfied with their current job. The most satisfied are Baby Boomers working for technology companies.

The baton is being passed from Baby Boomers to Generation X. There are stark differences. While Baby Boomers are willing to work longer hours, and focus on improving traditional processes, Generation X and Millennials are pushing to drive change and adopt next-generation processes. Note the higher satisfaction of employees in Figure 1 when there is challenging work, clear career paths, strong training programs in an environment when employees feel appreciated, and there is a culture of strong leadership which encourages diversity of thought.

Figure 1. Best Aspects of the Supply Chain Job

Supply Chain Profession Evolving

The supply chain profession is evolving. We don’t have all the answers because it is relatively new.

The use of the term ‘supply chain management’ to describe make, source, and deliver as a function is relatively new. While we have centuries of building logistics and transportation teams, the term supply chain management was first defined in 1982. Within manufacturing companies, 1/3 of leadership teams have a supply chain human resource teams, yet only 50% are effective.

For me, as I wrote the report, one thing was clear: supply chain management is still a white male profession. Only 28% of the respondents were female and 57% were Caucasian. Sadly, diversity in the profession remains an issue. I thought we had made more progress.

Figure 2. Diversity of Respondents

By and large, supply chain professionals in both genders have similar goals and aspirations. The only difference is the need for work from home, flex/hours and commuting considerations. I think the issue is that we are not building aspirations for supply chain management in young females in high schools and in the larger community.

Figure 3. Differences in Gender Characteristics

A year ago I attended a badly facilitated women’s networking conference. I left angry. As a first-generation female supply chain pioneer, I felt the content was patronizing and underserved the greater need. I was looking for a forum of women leaders building women leaders. As I looked around the room I was disturbed. Why? There were few women of color. I believe in diversity.

To be successful, I believe supply chain management needs diversity. I want to work in a career that is inclusive. Note that the differences in drivers for job satisfaction are greater by ethnicity than by sex. Employees of color are seeking greater career path opportunities, more diversity in the workforce, and greater benefits.

Figure 4. Differences in Drivers/Characteristics of Employment Opportunities by Ethnicity.

I was an early supply chain pioneer in the 1980s. In those days there were few females or people of color. After four decades I thought we had made more progress. In working on this report, I realize that I need to fight harder. As a result, this year I will be focus on several actions:

1) Speaking at US Colleges with Strong Minority Populations. Over the last three years I participated in career days, and networked academics with large companies recruiting efforts, to try to find greater placement for students of color. The report reminds me I need to stay focused on this mission.

2) Networking at the Imagine 2017 Conference. At this year’s 2017 Imagine conference I will be hosting a networking session to help companies better understand and embrace the needs of a diverse workforce.  We need to move past self-serving and patronizing groups to build a global and diverse workforce.

3) Hiring and Mentoring. During the year I will look for opportunities to hire and mentor diverse candidates. I will staff my events with students of color and hire co-ops with this intent in mind.

I hope you will join me in making supply chain management more inclusive. For greater insights on the current state of talent, today we share our full report to help global supply chain teams. In addition, we also share the powerpoint slides. We welcome your thoughts.